The Past Never Dies
by Walks with Scissors
Summary: Sometimes redemption comes when you aren't even looking for it. When a worldweary doctor from Tatooine helps an escaped slave flee, her past sins return to haunt her, along with a dangerous man posessed by the spirit of a long dead Sith lord.
1. Prologue:  Mos Eisley at night

**((Author note: ten chapters of this story are done but I like to leave them to ferment a few days before posting them, usually reread them a few times so I beg everyone's patience. Also I have extensive notes on this story posted on my author page if anyone wants to know the background for the story.))**

Sometimes it is truly a bad thing to be too clever for one's own good. Sometimes it can be a deadly thing.

Hasp Christo may have been aware of this and he might not have been, but either way he would have found very little appreciation for that irony as he ran through the dark streets of Mos Eisley on Tatooine. The twin suns had only recently descended below the horizon as he ran through the maze of narrow and haphazard throughways. The few street lights that lit his way also illuminated the meager handful of other people out walking the streets, none of them so much as looking up at the panic-stricken human running through the city - such was a scene not at all uncommon to the dangerous city.

He was a man who made his living out of poking his nose into places that it didn't belong and profiting off of the things that it sniffed out for him. He never particularly cared about what carnage and destruction fell in his wake after he sold his information to the highest bidder, all he cared about was the feel of good hard money in his pockets at the end of the day. He was a simple man with simple desires and goals, not a man who ever really set out to hurt others but just a man who was primarily looking out for his own best interests. And on this particular occasion, the realization was beginning to dawn in his mind that on top of the other things, he was also about to become a very dead man.

The beat up and dirty cloak that he wore had obviously seen far more use than it had ever really been designed for. It looked little different than the boots he wore, or the trousers and shirt he wore. They all had faded and weathered until whatever original color they possessed had long since been left behind. Now they were the non-color of the Tatooine landscape itself, they were the color of the desolation and the dust that was the planet. For that matter, with his mangy beard and unkempt hair and his craggy and sun-tortured face that looked a score of years older than it really was, Hasp himself did not look all that much better for wear than his clothing did.

And so in the end that was all that he appeared to be; a shambling mass of nothing and dust that was making his one last and desperate attempt to cling to life before succumbing to the inevitable. It was a sight that was far from uncommon in a world that itself seemed to be making a last and desperate cling to life.

Street upon street he rushed down, occasionally tripping and stumbling in the collection of stones and sand that littered the roadway. At one point he ran directly in front of a lumbering dewback being ridden by a large and menacing-looking Trandoshan. The beast reared back at the suddenness of Hasp's appearance and almost tossed it's rider out of the saddle. Hasp could hear the angry Trandoshan shouting curses at him as he ran on into the more aged sections of the city. He had hoped that maybe here in the darkest and deepest pits of the largest city on Tatooine, maybe he could find someone who would help him out of the dangerous predicament he had made for himself. At the very least, maybe he could find some place that he could hide.

Eyes wide and breathing heavy, he suddenly stopped on a dark street in the older part of the city. He neither saw nor heard anything aside from the hushed guttural whispers coming from the direction of a couple pairs of glowing Jawa eyes that watched him inquisitively for a moment before they too quickly departed. After that, the only sound was the sounds of urban nighttime - the gentle rush of the desert wind compared to the more technological and urbane sounds of laughter close by and the sound of a starship's thrusters roaring to live at the nearby spaceport.

The thought of starships suddenly gave him a degree of hope. Maybe he could find someone who would quickly take him off-world. Where didn't matter, anywhere just as long as it wasn't a planet that had someone trying to kill him. The thought did not last, however, his pursuer was not alone and no-doubt had friends who would be waiting enthusiastically at the spaceport in the hopes that he would be unwise enough to attempt an escape.

Seeing nothing else to do, he ducked into the alleyway and slumped down behind a crate which smelled as though it contained vegetables which had been rotting for some time. He exhaled tiredly and looked up into the sky. Easily visible to the naked eye were a pair of Imperial Star Destroyers which were in orbit around the planet, they were part of some task force that had been assigned to this system ever since a dust-up the Empire had with some rebels a few months earlier. That wasn't what he was primarily focused on though; he was far more interested in the sky in general.

Hasp Christo started at the stars, the unending and infinite expanse of starts that spread out over him. He was a thoughtful man in his own way at times, still a coward and a thief to be sure, but a thoughtful man. He looked up into the heavens and wondered what his life might have been like if his lot had been better, if he hadn't been forced to grow up and scratch out a living on this godforsaken ball of sand. He wondered what it was like to live on Coruscant, the imperial seat of the Empire; or maybe to live on Vortex, he once heard a traveler say that it was the most beautiful planet in all of the universe. Hasp didn't know about that, but he very much liked the idea of a place where he might have had an honest trade and something to take pride in, a family maybe.

Kids, Hasp thought. Hasp would have very much liked to have had kids.

He wished he could go back and rearrange the day that he had set in motion the actions that would end his life. He was too clever for his own good; there was no doubt about that. It was only a single gesture, an unguarded gesture that set the wheels of his mind in motion. The culmination of which was the discovery of a secret which he wished he could unlearn, regardless of how much he was sure the Empire would pay him for. But unfortunately, what is learned is not easily forgotten and the knowledge that one person will pay for, another will kill for.

The starship which had recently ignited its thrusters now cycled them up as it prepared to take off. For a moment all sound around him was blotted out from the high pitched whine and then booming of the ship lifting off of the ground and taking to the stars. Hasp watched as the craft thundered over him, a large freighter bound for better places than here. He envied those aboard the ship and in a voice too quiet to even perceive amidst the noise, he gave them a blessing for a safe and eventless voyage.

He watched the freighter as it sped away from Mos Eisley, taking the loud roar of its departure with it. It was only then that he could hear the crunching of boots against coarse gravel walking toward him. Hasp stood up quickly and pulled a blaster out of cloak as he backed up against the wall. A single red blaster bolt shot out from the shadowy figure approaching and struck him in the wrist, causing him to drop his weapon with a shout of pain. Almost quaking with fear, Hasp didn't even look to the charred flesh below his hand that would almost certainly require medical attention. He was far more concerned with living long enough to care whether or not it would require medical attention.

From the shadows stepped a woman and at last Hasp's fears were confirmed. There was going to be no escape from this, Hasp was going to die this night. The look on her face was not what he had been expecting though; there was no hatred or malice in her eyes. He saw no blood thirst, no explicit wish for his death. All he saw in her eyes was a tiredness and perhaps sadness. None of this changed the fact that she had her blaster leveled at his forehead, however.

"You aren't even going to try to run?" The woman asked him, it really was not a question.

"You're Ebra Burden." Was all Hasp said back.

He stared at her in what was either terror or horror. She could not tell which it was, but they both really amounted to the same when it was all over and done with. She had seen the same look on the faces of untold numbers of people about to meet their deaths. She made no reply to him but simply stepped forward and aimed her shot to make his death as quick and painless as she possibly could.

Sensing the end coming, Hasp shook his head back and forth quickly; he was weeping. "Please don't. I'm sorry I was so nosey. If you let me go, I promise that I will never tell anyone that you are alive."

The broken man collapsed to his knees, sobbing into the dry and uncaring dust. The woman that he called Ebra Burden slowly walked to stand over him, her blaster pointing down into the back of his head. She was an assassin, a damn good one, and one more death amounted to nothing; especially not in this place, especially not when it came to a man that would die as forgotten and unnoticed as he had been for his entire life. Nevertheless, a pair of tears rolled down her face knowing that she didn't have a choice in the matter.

"If it were just my life, I would let you go." She told him, sadly. "But there are other people that I'm protecting. If the Empire knows that I'm still alive, it will put them in danger too." And then she added, a little coldly. "You should have just minded your own business."

"I'm so sorry." Hasp coughed out in a strangled sob. "I've made such a mess of my life, I don't want to die. I want another chance."

The woman looked up into the sky for a moment, the endless and omnipresent sky, before looking back down at the man huddled on the ground.

"Please." He wept, his tears wetting the ground beneath him.

Ebra Burden pulled the trigger. The sound of the blaster went unnoticed in the din of the Mos Eisley night.


	2. Chapter 1:  A late night encounter

The late night comings and goings of Mos Eisley happened almost unnoticed while the majority of the city slept through the night – especially here in the old quarter of the city. The Mos Eisley police mostly reserve their skills for the new quarter where they protect the merchants and the politicians; all of the people that had a trade that was considered worth protecting. But it was here in the old quarter that the lower echelons of society were allowed to conduct their affairs without question from the powers that be. Here were the gamblers and the thieves, the smugglers and the vagabonds; the scum.

Mos Eisley's citizens may sleep through the night, but Mos Eisley herself never really slept. Some of its most important business took place in the very final hours of darkness before the binary suns rose up into the sky to bring with them their torturous and scorching heat. Many people actually cherished these hours as that they were the few that provided any real relief from the planet's oven-like conditions. And some few where awake just because that's the state they happened to be in at that moment. In the couple hours before dawn, the majority of the inhabitants of the Mos Eisley Cantina fell into this last category.

In fact, this was the one time of day that the place seemed to take on a quiet stillness. The building was old and was constructed of the same sand-doped duracrete that made up basically the entirety of the old quarter. The building had no windows whatsoever – this was of practical value of course – no windows meant that the establishment would stay cooler during the heat of midday with much less work. The interior of the building was mostly unadorned; it was what it was, ugly and brown with very little effort taken to make it look anything but. It was the look of most all of the business establishments in the area – a kind of earthy rusticness.

At times the cantina could be almost deafeningly loud and most of the time it could be trusted to be dangerous to all but the most well prepared, but during this short amount of time in the early morning it was sleepy and laid back. A dark-skinned and colossal beast of a woman who called herself "Mama Troga" played the nalargon on the stage, but her often boisterous and feisty music had deteriorated to fit the moods of the bar's last few patrons. So enormous that she made the expansive instrument that was arrayed around her look almost tiny, she plinked away at the keys as she swayed back and forth to the music.

Few people really seemed to notice the music, least of all the woman who sat at a table in the middle of the room. Her long desert camouflage duster hung down over her shoulders almost like a protective cloak. The matching shirt and pants underneath were obviously not a fashion statement, they had seen use; a lot of it by the look of them. The only thing that seemed out of place was her hair; a long and simple blond braid worked its way down her back, a sharp and jarringly noticeable contrast from the tan and brown cloth.

Her chin rested on the table and she stared at the glass in her hand thoughtfully, only a trickle of amber fluid rested in the bottom of the vessel. She blinked drowsily as she watched the dim and dirty light of the cantina diffused and muted by the sturdy walls of the glass. Through it she could see the only lively patron in the entire establishment.

Slightly interested, even through the thick fog of her drunkenness, the woman sat up and squinted her eyes. A Twi'lek woman danced across the floor in front of her, definitely not one of the regular dancers, this was someone that she had never seen before. She was little more than a girl and the clothing that she was wearing weren't those of a dancer's. It was a curious sight to be sure, most of the dancers that entered this place were on the payroll of the cantina itself. All of them were hand-picked by the daytime bartender, Wuher, who seemed to have an eye for such things.

"Nichola, do you want a refill?" A voice above her said, startling her.

The woman in camouflage looked up to see a matronly old woman standing above her with a decanter of dark amber liquor. She looked at her own glass for a moment and then nodded.

"Sure Ackmena, why not?" Nichola said, trying not to slur her words. "Who's the new dancer?"

The grey-haired woman looked over at the Twi'lek for a moment before pouring the drink. "I don't know. She came in here a few hours ago and offered to entertain for tips. She's not much of a dancer but I didn't have the heart to tell her no. I'm hoping she leaves before the daytime crowd starts pouring in here, she will find herself walking out of here as someone's slave…or worse."

"If she isn't someone's slave already." Nichola noted, taking a gulp out of the glass almost as soon as the liquid stopped flowing into it.

Ackmena looked over to the near-vacant bar for a moment before sitting down next to the woman with the blond ponytail.

"Yeah, I noticed that too." She said. "Not dressed like a cantina dancer is she. Do you think she is an escaped slave?"

Nichola shrugged. "Probably, but I'm not going to be the one to turn her in. If she managed to get free and wants to make a better life for herself, then more power to her. It's probably not going to happen but I've seen far too much suffering to be party to any more right now. I bet that by the time the sun sets tonight she's going to be in the hands of some slaver."

"You don't think she has a chance?" Ackmena asked. "Then why not turn her in and collect the money for her return?"

Nikki shrugged almost imperceptibly, she thought that the question was Ackmena's coy way of making fun of her but she wasn't completely sure. "I didn't say she doesn't have a chance, just that she doesn't have a chance on her own. And I don't turn her in because I don't need the money, but there are other people in here that do and it's only a matter of time before one of them puts two and two together."

The old woman said nothing for a long moment, casting a critical eye on Nichola. "Its been five years, wouldn't you say?"

Nikki cocked her head, not understanding. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"That you have been coming in here." Ackmena elaborated. "Five years wouldn't you say?"

Nikki went back to her drink, not wanting to meet the unerringly perceptive bartender's gaze.

The two of them sat in silence for a while listening to the sound of Mama Troga's nalargon, the bartender patiently waiting for the woman in front of her to answer the question.

"Yeah, it's been about that long." Nikki said after it was obvious the question wasn't going to be dropped.

"I know the people you work for." Ackmena said and then raised her hand up as Nichola opened her mouth to object. "I know the people you work for and I'm not going to pry – for my sake and yours both. But I just notice that you have been down lately, not to mention you have been drinking a helluva lot more than usual. I just want you to know that if you ever need to talk about something, I'm here to listen."

Nichola couldn't find any words to say so she simply nodded at the bartender and watched as the woman stood up and walked back to do her business. She thought that Ackmena was a nice enough woman, but she didn't need to be burdened with any of her problems. And what problems did she really have anyway? Nothing that was important enough to complain about, she had a full stomach, a roof over her head and her freedom – which was a lot more than could be said for a fair portion of Tatooine's inhabitants.

The thought made her look once more to the dancing Twi'lek girl. She was quite attractive even in the dirty rags she was wearing, and her skin was a type of golden-peach color that was really quite rare on her species. If she was looking for tips, she truly chose the wrong part of the night to do it, Nikki had not doubt that she had probably been dancing the whole time without a single other person even noticing her.

Nichola reached down into her pocket and pulled out the money she had there. There were two paper notes there, a thousand credits, all of the hard currency she had on her at the moment. It was a healthy tip to be sure, an enormous one really – more than a lot of dancers see in a week of dancing during the profitable parts of the evening.

She stood up and upended her glass, emptying the last of the thick and caustic liquid into her mouth. She set the glass back down on the table and wiped away the tiny trickle of alcohol off of her chin that had somehow missed her mouth altogether. Her legs were leaden and wobbly, but with some complaint they did support her weight as she slowly dragged herself across the room.

The dancing girl did not notice Nichola until she was almost standing right next to her. She suddenly stopped dancing and looked at her with a mixture of alarm and, Nikki was sure that she could see it there, a barely existent glimmer of hope. She had the look about her that said it all; she was a recently escaped (or freed) slave that did not have the slightest idea what to do now that she didn't have anyone telling her what to do.

Nichola took the girls hand and pressed the two pieces of paper scrip into it, closing her hand around it.

"Take this and get yourself some food and some new clothes." Nikki whispered to the girl. "And then if you want to remain free, please get yourself out of this bar and out of this city."

"Thank you" The girl said, meekly. But Nichola either did not hear her or did not care to acknowledge it as she walked to the door and out into the early morning air.

The pre-dawn gloom had descended on Mos Eisley outside the Cantina. It was a curious weather phenomenon, a misty fog that descended on the desert just before the sun rose to burn it away. It gave the sand-colored buildings around her an older and more futile appearance. She bundled her duster around her and walked in the direction of the one which her speeder was parked in front of.

She thumbed the key on the remote unit as she got close to it. She could hear a servomotor come to life and the speeder's canopy quickly retracted back from the cockpit so she could climb inside which she did with a difficulty and slowness that can only come from extreme drunkenness. Sitting down in the pilot's seat she inhaled and exhaled several times, taking in a little bit more of the head-clearing cool air of the early morning before she sealed the canopy again and ignited the speeder's engines.

The SoroSuub XP-38's three engines roared to life and Nikki opened up the throttle a few times quickly, feeding extra fuel into the turbines, heating them up. There was no way that she was going to head home, the journey between here and there was not a particularly dangerous one, but it wasn't one you wanted to make in the dark when you had less than your full wits about you either. She decided it would be a better idea to go by her office here in town and just sleep there for the night.

The office of Doctor Nichola Toora had been a welcome sight to the old quarter ever since she set up shop five years ago. Very few doctors of repute or sanity were willing to work in such a backwater part of a backwater city on a backwater planet. The fact that Nikki's medical offices were most likely a front for another organization, probably a criminal organization, was both expected and unquestioned by the unseemly citizens of the old quarter who were just happy to have someone to tend to their various ills and injuries, many of them received in the commission of acts that they wanted as few questions asked about as possible.

Nikki was ready to leave but her head simply did not wish to stop spinning. She elected to wait a few minutes and hopefully let her head clear before she took the short drive to her place of business. She killed the ignition on the speeder and reclined the seat, closing her eyes and groaning. She would start on her way in a few minutes, but for now she felt that she could use a little rest.


	3. Chapter 2: Rude awakening

Nichola awoke with a start, nearly banging her head on the canopy of her landspeeder. A flood of sensations filled her head, the most insistent being the feeling as if a great durasteel spike had been driven through her forehead. The pain of her hangover was almost blinding, her first reaction to waking up was to cover her eyes from the agony of the glare of the early morning suns pouring in through the cockpit of the speeder.

Surreally, someone was banging on the canopy of her speeder incessantly, she could see an open palm slapping against the glass and the glass itself seeming to bubble and bow inward under the impacts. The echo of the thumping inside the confined space from each hit made her head feel as though it were inside of a drum. She tried to protest but only a strangled croak came out of her dry and tortured throat, instead she fumbled around for the canopy release lever – anything to make the pain of the thumping stop.

Finally she found the lever and pulled, the servomotors whirred as the canopy retracted backwards. The flood of air entering the cockpit made her suddenly realize how hot it had gotten so early in the morning. She felt as though she was literally swimming in her own sweat that had gathered inside of her duster and heavy military-spec camos. They felt suffocating, and the fresh air made her exhale in relief. She held her hand out to shield her eyes from the brilliant glare of the suns before she cautiously, experimentally opened one up to see who was so persistent about getting her attention.

The light of a thousand suns seemed to stream in through her narrowly cracked eyelid, it made her slam it shut again with another groan of agony. Bits and pieces of the night before slowly started to come back to her; she remembered talking to Ackmena and then something about a Twi'lek slave girl. She remembered her plan to go back to her office to sleep off the effects of the alcohol, but it seemed that her plan never worked itself out.

"Miss Nikki?" a girl's voice asked, unsure.

Nichola groaned again, inhaling and exhaling a few times. She steeled herself against the pain and very cautiously opened her eyes against the sun. Standing over her, blessedly between herself and the light of the rising suns, was a young girl of maybe fifteen or sixteen. She had a very tomboyish appearance that was not helped by how her hair was hewn short right below her ears. She was one of the local urchins that did work for an "organization" that Nikki happened to be associated with.

"Mica…" Nikki croaked. "What do you want?"

Nikki didn't dislike Mica Wavingstrider, exactly. The girl was simply a fool who would very shortly wind up dead. Nichola didn't feel this with any malice toward the kid, nor did she wish her to be dead, it was just something that she was sure was going to happen. The girl had very little sense of danger or her own mortality and tended to get herself into hazardous situations for which she had planned no way to escape.

"Why didn't you go home last night, didn't you realize that it was going to be hot when you woke up in here?" The girl started prattling, before leaning in and smelling the interior of the speeder. "Oh wow, are you drunk?"

"Mica…" Nikki repeated, sounding a little more irritated than she intended. "What do you want?"

"Oh, I have a message from Master Starstealer for you." The girl told her. "He needs you to come see him right away."

Nikki thought about it for a moment. Azwaros Starstealer was a boss of the organization Nichola worked for. The Severed Shade they were called, at least in the shadowy corners of Tatooine. To everyone else the organization was a loose collection of legitimate business ventures, the largest of them being Starstealer Enterprises. The Shade had no formal member list, no formal headquarters and ultimately no method of proof that they existed at all – such was the precautions necessary to operate a crime syndicate on a world that is already so well dominated by the Hutts.

"Well then what are you waiting for Mica, get your ass in here." Nichola said.

The girl seemed to be taken aback for a moment and then quickly nodded and ran around to the other side of the speeder while Nichola ignited the engines. The turbines came to life with a howl as the girl leapt into the passenger seat beside Nikki. She had no sooner gotten herself strapped in when the XP-38 lurched forward, speeding off down one of the main throughways of the old quarter heading to the outskirts of Mos Eisley.

She had just happened to pass by the front of the cantina and saw something that made her sigh with disappointment. She saw that the dancing girl from last night was out in front of the cantina and talking to a pair of Twi'lek males. Nichola knew them, although not by name, they were slavers working for a competing crime syndicate. It seemed that her prediction was going to be true after all; the girl would be a slave again before the twin suns set.

She pushed the depressing though out of her head and looked over at Mica in her passenger seat.

"You walked all the way here kid?" Nikki asked as she slowed down for a moment to allow a trio of Jawas to escort their bantha across the road.

"No, I caught a ride into town with Morvii and Ardann" Mica said.

Nikki nodded as they had gotten underway again. She knew the pair, a Zabrak woman and her human husband; they were both excellent pilots and smugglers. It struck her for not the first time that some of the nicest people she knew were criminals. She supposed it meant that you can't judge someone by what they do for a living.

The speeder maneuvered its way through the outskirts of town and out through the city gates, beyond were the houses of the wealthy and affluent. In the hillsides over Mos Eisley were the grand homes, or as grand as truly could be made on this planet; their residents included the planet's great merchants and politicians, and also many of the more successful crime bosses. It was hard to tell exactly which of the three Azwaros Starstealer was, in a way he was actually all three of them at once. Despite his more nefarious pursuits, he was also a very prominent businessman and community leader.

Starstealer mansion was not far into the hills and it had a magnificent view of all of the comings and goings into and out of the city, Nikki suspected that Azwaros liked it that way. He was not the leader of the Severed Shade, but he was probably the unofficial second in command. It was his job to manage all of the legitimate front companies, the businesses that launder the ill-gotten money that flooded into the organization and made everything come through the other side clean again. He oversaw the operations that made them appear on the up and up, the businesses that allowed them to function with a minimum of hassle from the planetary and imperial officials.

As the speeder pulled up to the front of the mansion, one of the servants stepped up to the side of the speeder. Nikki released the hatch and got out of the vehicle, leaving it running. Without a word to the servant, she handed over control of the speeder to him. Azwaros was big on decorum and luxury; he enjoyed the ability to pamper his guests with his servants and his valets. Nichola never felt truly comfortable with it but eventually relented to the treatment, she did not care for the idea of someone doing something for her that she could just as easily do herself.

She walked to the front doors of the mansion, leaving Mica running to catch up with her. Predictably, there was someone there to open the doors for them as they walked inside to the large entryway. The house itself with brightly lit, the foyer dominated by a large fountain – a luxury that only the wealthiest could afford on a planet as dry as Tatooine. The Starstealer family was rich to the point of vulgarity, Nikki had always suspected that it was the romantic side of Azwaros that kept him in the business – he liked the power it gave him to break the law, especially imperial law.

"Doctor Toora!" came a voice from a corridor to her left.

Nichola smiled as she turned to greet the imposing Zabrak that walked into the foyer. She only gave a slight wince of pain at the effect that the man's booming voice had on her throbbing head.

"Good morning Azwaros." Nikki said, nodding to him. "How are you today?"

The man crossed his clasped his hands in front of himself and gave a very good imitation of looking stern. "I would be doing much better if I had been able to find you when I first started trying yesterday afternoon rather than this morning."

Nikki shrugged. "Sorry about that. I had business to attend to yesterday and I turned my communicator off. I suppose I forgot to turn it back on afterwards."

"Nikki!" a shrill voice screamed, anchoring another spike of pain into Nikki's temple which caused her to visibly wince.

A preteen Twi'lek girl came running into the room and practically leapt into Nichola's arms. Nikki laughed despite herself, twirling the girl around once before setting her back on the marble floor.

"Good morning Talanna." Nikki said. She enjoyed being here in the house of two of the very few people in the galaxy who she actually liked and enjoyed the company of.

"Talanna dear." Azwaros said. "Go and play for a little while. Doctor Toora and I have business that we need to discuss."

"Yes father." The girl sulked and then spun in a circle, her lekku spinning about her head. She scampered off into the next room where, if Nikki's intuition was correct, she would be eavesdropping on the entire conversation.

Obviously, the girl was not the blood child of Azwaros Starstealer. Nichola didn't know all of the details exactly, but the rumor was that Azwaros had found the young girl orphaned when she was a toddler and adopted her as his own. The girl had an unnatural penchant for getting herself into trouble, and more than once did a member of the Severed Shade find themselves assigned to the somewhat ignoble assignment of getting to baby-sit for young Talanna Starstealer. Nikki had been there before, but unlike many of the others, she didn't find it to be an onerous task at all, she rather liked spending time with the young girl. The fact that she found the same trait about Talanna endearing which she found irritating in Mica she did not pay much mind to at all.

"Nichola, do you know of a Rodian named Heeooto Sewo?" Azwaros asked.

"I think so." She said. "He's a spice smuggler, really small time. He's been operating in this area lately, but he hasn't been enough of a threat that putting him out of the way is worth the trouble. Has that changed?"

"Yes and no." Azwaros said, directing Nikki and Mica to a couch by the fountain. "He's not a threat to our interests, but at the same time he has been muscling into our territory in a way that the boss finds…troubling."

The boss… Nichola thought. Melkin Antross was a man that she had only seen a handful of times; it was generally a good thing too seeing that he had a reputation for being not entirely stable at times, and was about as ruthless a man as they came. She much preferred doing all of her business through Azwaros.

"We want him to be dealt with in a way that discourages others. Specifically, we want Sewo to have "imperial difficulties" if you take my meaning."

Nikki smiled and nodded. "That's where I come in, I take it."

Azwaros nodded to which Nikki simply leaned back in the soft couch and crossed her hands behind her head. She appeared to be deep in thought for several long minutes, pausing once to take a look at the timepiece attached to her wrist. Azwaros in no way showed any sign of impatience, simply waiting as Nikki worked out what would be (as it usually did) a fitting method of dealing with this relatively minor distraction.

Finally she leaned forward again and looked at Azwaros.

"Okay, I'm going to take Mica with me today, she's going to be helping me out with this one." Nikki said, ignoring the look of alarm she got from the girl sitting next to her. "I'm going to need all of the intelligence we already have on this Heeooto Sewo, and then I'm going to need spice… a lot of spice."

A small smile played across Nichola's face as she winked.


	4. Chapter 3: Natural subterfuge

Lieutenant Marr Herrick stepped out of the Imperial Security offices in the new quarter of Mos Eisley, barely even hearing the sound of the door hissing shut behind him. It had been a long day and he was glad that it was over. He hated Tatooine. He hated absolutely everything about it. He had a hard time imagining anything more menial and soul-killing than working on this meaningless and insignificant ball of dirt off in the middle of nowhere.

He was beginning to adopt a defeatist mentality about being stationed here. It wasn't any surprise to anyone that an assignment to Tatooine definitely was a sign of a career that was going nowhere. He had such plans when he joined the Imperial Army; he was going to work toward a job in the Imperial Security Bureau and make a real name for himself. Instead he somehow found his way off of his pleasant home planet of Naboo and onto this bleak and decidedly unpleasant planet on the outer rim.

He stepped into the street and started walking in the direction of the little hovel that he had been sent to as part of his housing assignment when he was sent here three months earlier. He was assured that he would be given better accommodations after he had a chance to settle in. The rest of the officers assigned here thought of this promise as an amusing joke, all of them had been told the same thing and they had yet to see the administration follow through on that promise – and some of them had been assigned to Mos Eisley for years.

His soul wailed at that thought…"for years." It was depressing to think that he had been on this planet for as long as he already had been. It was a worse thing to think that he could be here for a much, much longer time.

These frustrating thoughts had caused him to momentarily lose track of where he was going and he nearly walked headlong into an old woman and the girl walking along with her. The woman looked taken aback, almost panic stricken. Worse, she had the look of neediness in her eyes that Marr had come to associate with people who were just about to waste large amounts of his time. With an inward sigh of frustration, he waited for her to tell him whatever it was that (she thought) was so damned important.

"Oh sir!" She said, her accent was thick. "I'm so glad that we ran into you. My granddaughter here just came across something that is simply terrible. Terrible!"

He looked from the old woman to the teenaged blond girl and wondered if anything in the galaxy could truly be that terrible.

"Okay, what exactly are you talking about?" Marr asked the woman, trying mostly unsuccessfully to keep the tone of derision out of his voice.

"Everyone in our neighborhood knows of this place and I have told my daughter and her friends so many times not to go around there or play near there, but they never listen to me." The woman crooned, her accent so thick that it was nearly indecipherable.

Marr held both of his hands up. "Hold on a second. I don't know what you are talking about, what place does everyone know about and why?"

"The Rodian bastards in the house, they are always selling horrible stuff to the people that come by there, they are always trashing up my city. And nobody ever does anything about it." The woman's rant continued.

Marr had a difficult time suppressing a smile. The woman's blind rage reminded him of his mother in a not entirely endearing way. He listened to her go on for almost five full minutes, not paying attention to most of it but knowing that if he let her rave for a bit then she would be satisfied enough to answer the few simple questions he would need to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. He suspected that it was the woman's granddaughter who was standing off to the side and absent-mindedly pulling at her long blond hair who would be a much better source of information.

Finally when the ranting died down, Lieutenant Herrick took matters into his own hands and circumvented the old woman altogether, focusing his attention on the girl.

"Okay my dear." He said kindly. "You saw something in this place that your grandmother has been talking about; could you tell me what it was?"

"Well, umm…" The girl started out, pulling at her hair some more. "I was with a friend and we were just kind of wandering around when we sent by this house and the back door was standing wide open. The place is abandoned except for these Rodians that hang out around the place every once in a while so we decided that we would go inside and take a look around."

"And what did you find in there." Marr Herrick asked, intent on keeping the conversation moving so the old woman wouldn't have another chance to bust in and take over again.

"Well, most of the house was empty but in a back room there were all of these crates. A bunch of them were open so we decided to take a look inside one." The girl said, looking down at her feet and pointedly avoiding the gaze of the imperial officer.

"Here! Here!" the old woman said, almost shouting. "This is what they found in that bastard Rodian's house!"

She held out a vial of viscous yellow liquid to the imperial officer. Who took it and held up his hand, cutting her off.

"Thank you madam" he said, a mild tone of warning in his voice which silenced her almost as effectively as a stun bolt would have.

Lieutenant Herrick pulled the stopper out of the vial and smelled the liquid inside. It was positively vile and exactly what he thought it was at first glance. His assumptions that he had made from the old woman's first insane ramblings was now confirmed, the house that the girl found this vial in was involved in the local spice trade and the chemical in the bottle was an illegal substance called Muon Gold. He suddenly had stars in his eyes, this could be the just the thing that he needed to get noticed. Just maybe a major spice bust could be the key to getting him off of this miserable planet and put his career back in the fast track again.

He looked back to the girl and smiled sincerely, barely able to contain his excitement.

"Could you take me to this place?" He asked her.

She nodded mutely back to him, her fingers tangled up in her hair.

"Nevermind, I will show you where it is. You come with me and look so you can get these walking bugs off of our street!" The old woman shouted, walking off down the street in front of the lieutenant and her granddaughter. Her rant became more indecipherable as she walked on ahead.

"Is she always like this?" Marr asked the young girl.

"No." She said, finally looking up at him and smiling. "She's usually worse."

- - - - - - - -

Doctor Nichola Toora's office was on a busy street and had no small number of visitors constantly stopping by to see if she was open for business, this trend was not helped by the fact that she never kept predictable hours. If she was available she would see patients, and if she was not than the door would simply be locked. This constant interest in her presence was problematic at times, and was precisely the reason she had a back door and a garage for her speeder built in the back alley behind her office.

It was in the late afternoon that Nichola's speeder crept into the garage, careful not to display the fact to anyone who happened to be lurking around the front of her office. The automatic doors closed down behind the speeder almost as soon as she had passed beyond their threshold. The old woman quickly powered down the engines and climbed out of her vehicle, followed along by her very animated and excited granddaughter.

Anyone who suspected that the office was a front for another operation was, of course, correct. The full extent of that front was known to only a handful of people, even within Shade. The old woman led the younger girl through a false back wall in a cleaning closet and down into an expansive basement that was actually a fair bit bigger than the office above.

Whereas the office and medical supplies above were second-hand and run down, much as would be expected from a doctor so uncompromising as to work on Tatooine, the equipment in the basement was new and gleaming. The state of the art facilities were truly the best that money could buy.

"Where did you learn how to do all of this?" Mica asked, still tugging at the long blond hair that was so new and different for her that she couldn't quite keep her hands off of it.

"Here and there" The old woman said, her voice suddenly younger and without the thick accent. "Most of it from places that you would be better off not to know anything about."

Nikki took a glitteringly sharp steel blade and gently passed it across the skin of her neck a few times until the polymer covering over her face split away and allowed her to grasp the end and pull half of it off. In an instant the face of the old woman was gone and Nichola was staring at Mica crossly.

"At least twice that imperial was watching you pulling at your hair like that, you need to be smarter and learn how to act when you are disguised. You could have screwed up everything just by being careless."

The girl immediately let her hair drop to her side. "I'm sorry. I haven't ever had long hair like this before, it's kind of neat. I have a hard time keeping my hands off of it."

Nichola didn't answer but instead walked over and gripped the girl's long hair with one hand and pulled on it, hard. The glue holding it in place let go with a tearing sound and a shriek of pain on the part of Mica. Nikki handed the wig to Mica with a look of disgust.

"There." She said. "Now you don't have to worry about it anymore."

Mica gave Nikki a look that reminded her of the look a kicked pet might give its owner. The girl gave a passable performance, but passable was all it was. She would have to learn to follow directions much more effectively if she was ever going to be any real use.

"Can you make yourself into other races?" Mica asked.

"I can make myself into anything I want to be." Nikki said simply, going back to removing her own makeup.

"I don't understand, what do you mean by that?" Mica said.

Nikki smiled almost devilishly. "What I mean is – be careful what you say in public. The stormtrooper you pass as you walk down the street. The old woman selling stuff at a fruit stand, the young girl who asks you for money as you pass by; one of them might be me. _They all might be me."_

"You can make yourself into a girl my age?" Mica asked, a little unsettled. "Someone who is shorter than you are?"

Nikki pointed to the two bacta tanks in the room and the array of computers between them.

"It takes a whole lot of time and preparation, but yes." She said. "The body is only flesh that houses your mind and soul. It can be altered to serve whatever purpose you want it to serve. A lot of people have a problem with that, they see what they look like as their own personal identity and don't take well to the idea that the face they see in the mirror is entirely optional."

"I wish I could learn something like this…" Mica lamented.

"This is the easy part." Nikki said. "It's easy to change your appearance. The hard part is to change how you act, to change your mannerisms to the person you are attempting to copy. That is the part that takes a lifetime of practice and commitment to perfect."

"Is that why master Starstealer likes you so much?" Mica asked, curious.

"What do you mean?" Nikki asked the girl, furrowing her brow.

"He doesn't like almost anyone, but he likes you." She elaborated. "Is that why?"

Nikki only laughed at this. "Azwaros likes me because when he first recruited me to work for Shade; I passed the test he gave me in a very unconventional way."

"How?" Mica asked.

"Azwaros had told me to use my talents to steal a certain sum of money, although he didn't give me any other details than that. So what I did was I studied him. I studied his mannerisms, his habits, his family, everything. And then one day I copied him and walked right into one of his factories. I made a few changes, gave a couple particularly hard working employees raises and then I walked out with about five times the value of equipment that he had asked me to steal."

Mica smiled. "So he asked you to steal, and you stole from him?"

"In a way." Nikki admitted. "I gave everything back, but what impressed me was how I did it and how I managed to convince everyone that I was him – Even his own son. He's had the utmost confidence in me ever since."

"Now sit very still for a moment." Nikki said, leaning forward and putting her hand on the back of Mica's head so she could carefully remove the programmable plastic lenses that were changing the young girl's eye color from brown to blue.

"I will teach you anything you are willing to take the time to learn." Nikki said as she worked. "But keep in mind one important fact. You can look the way you do now and convince someone that you are someone else simply by the way you act. But you can look like someone entirely different and fail to convince someone you are that person if you are unable to play the part up here."

Nikki tapped her finger to Mica's forehead for emphasis, smiling slightly.

"You understand what I'm telling you?" Nikki asked.

Mica nodded mutely.

"No you don't." Nikki said, smiling and shaking her head. "But you will."


	5. Chapter 4: An unexpected space flight

**((Thank you, Skywalker05, for your reviews these last few chapters – your input has been much appreciated.))**

After a brief call to Azwaros to let him know that a chain of events that would inevitably make Sewo's life more interesting had been put into place, Nikki started on her way back to the Mos Eisley Cantina. It had been a long and difficult day and she couldn't think of anything that would calm her nerves more than a few drinks. Mica Wavingstrider had seemed intent on accompanying (and pestering) her through the remainder of the day and possibly well into the night, but Nichola had bluntly told her that it was time for her to go away. She had finally had enough of the girl's never-ceasing mouth.

The suns were getting low in the sky, bathing the surrounding landscape in a ruddy reddish glow as Nikki parked her speeder in exactly the same place as she had the night before. The amount she had been drinking was starting to alarm and depress her both at the same time. And the depression that was lying in around her was making her drink more. The cycle was frighteningly self-perpetuating.

She pushed thoughts like this out of her head. They didn't mean anything and they were damn well guaranteed not to make her situation any better, so they were best suited by not thinking of them at all. The past and the present were what they were; the future would tend to itself in time.

And the present was all about Nikki getting her hands on a bottle of something, anything, that would make the galaxy seem at peace with itself again. Or at least make her too drunk to care about it.

The inside of the cantina was a far cry away from what it had been the night before. Things were just starting to pick up when Nikki came in through the front door. Nearly every spot at the tables and the bar were taken up and the noise was nigh on deafening. Laughter and shouting rose above the din, but for the most part the feeling in the bar was one of satisfaction rather than aggression – that was the way that Nikki preferred it. On the nights where the latter emotion was prevailing, Nikki inevitably found herself in the back room or in her office sewing people up from knife wounds and the like.

There were a few people in the Cantina she knew that night, but most of them she did not. There was a pilot for a pirate organization named the "Black Suns". His name was Am'ee Morningstar and outside of the Cantina they might be shooting at each other, but there was a kind of unspoken and unwritten cease fire when it came to the Mos Eisley cantina. Members of competing syndicates could come here and have at least a reduced chance of being shot at.

Nikki walked up to one of the few empty spots at the bar and nodded to Wuher, the daytime bartender. He was certainly less personable than Ackmena was, but that's precisely what she wanted tonight. She wanted someone who would just pour her drinks for her and not try to get her to talk about things she didn't want to think about. Right now the only thing she was interested in was getting drunk.

Wuher seemed to sense this and didn't say a word as he placed a thick glass tumbler and a nearly full bottle of Corellian brandy in front of her. Nikki nodded to him and poured her glass about halfway full. She felt calmer just from the smell of the thick and heavy alcoholic fumes rolling out of the glass.

She was just about to take a drink when a scream came from the middle of the room. Nikki turned around and saw, unbelievably, the same Twi'lek girl from the night before in the middle of the room. There was a tall human woman holding her by the upper arm and dragging her for the door. The Twi'lek was fighting back, but the fact seemed almost irrelevant to the larger human woman.

"Somebody help me!" The Twi'lek screamed out.

Nikki turned back to the bar and picked up her drink, intent on taking a drink. Instead she stared at the amber liquid again and turned back to watch the spectacle unfolding in front of her. A large part of her wanted to just curl her lips around the glass, but somewhere in her she was remembering the unpracticed exuberance of the girl dancing last night. It seemed such a far cry from the screaming girl being dragged out of the cantina less than a day later. She tried to imagine the girl being a slave again and found that not only could she not imagine it, she didn't want to imagine it.

As she set her drink back down on the bar, the rational part of her mind asked her if it was really worth the trouble she was bound to cause for herself to do something about this. The irrational side of her mind won out, the irrational side said that it didn't care and it was time to put a stop to this.

She rushed across the room and grabbed hold of the Twi'lek's shoulder. In her mind she saw some comical tug-of-war taking place but instead the human woman just stopped and looked at Nichola.

"This isn't any of your concern." The woman said in a low tone of voice, a dangerous tone of voice. "She's my property and I'm here to take her back."

"I'm sure that you have some kind of proof of that claim then?" Nikki said, not taking her hand off of the Twi'lek who had suddenly become silent.

The woman scowled and made a rumbling deep in her throat but Nikki didn't back down.

"I don't need your permission or the permission of anyone else in this room to retrieve my own property." The woman sneered.

She turned for the door, pulling the girl's arm. Nikki realized that maybe this was going to turn into a tug-of-war after all when the supposed slave owner came up short. A man in a flight suit was standing directly in front of her with his arms crossed, barring her way. Amazingly, it was Am'ee, the Black Sun pilot she saw earlier.

"I think that the doctor has a point." He said. "If you say that she's your slave, you better have some way to prove it if you plan on taking her out of here."

The woman gave another sneer and Nikki noticed that almost from out of nowhere, there was a large Twi'lek male on either side of Am'ee. Nikki remembered them; they were the two that she saw talking to the girl earlier in the day. It seemed that these slavers were one big happy family. From his stance and the flicker in Am'ee's eyes, he aware of the two men as well.

"I think the two of you should go back to your drinks and stick to your own concerns." One of the Twi'lek men said, the threat in his voice was unmistakable.

The slaver woman pulled on the Twi'lek girl's arm one more time and Nikki pulled back. It was in that precise moment that the world seemed to explode around them.

Finished with the interference of others, the slaver woman clenched her fist and threw a punch at Nikki which was evaded with a measured, almost leisurely ease. Nikki wasn't any stranger to fighting and let go of the slave girl's shoulder to give herself some room to fight. The slaver woman was angry and fought with an almost catlike ferocity to which Nikki had to back up several steps to avoid flurry of open-handed punches. She stumbled against another cantina patron and went down in a heap, the woman on top of her swinging blindly.

Behind them, Am'ee had one of his arms grabbed by each of the Twi'lek males. One of them taking the opportunity to punch him in the face, and the other in the gut. He collapsed to his knees and they picked him back up and took turns hitting him. The fight was decidedly not going in his favor when one of the two Twi'leks suddenly blinked, his head flying forward violently as an explosion of glass and alcohol made a halo above him. He stood there in place for a moment and then a second bottle crashed into the back of his head, this one dropping him to his knees where he see-sawed for a moment before crashing face-first into the floor.

Am'ee and the other Twi'lek watched this in a kind of fascinated shock. Their own fight was temporarily forgotten as they watched the large man taken to the ground by a pot-bellied little Sullustan with a broken bottle in each hand. It was Am'ee that first regained his composure, punching the Twi'lek in the face, sending him over the back of a chair and onto the table of an enraged group of Bothans who seemed unsure of which of the two to blame for the disruption of their drinks.

Nikki and the slaver were rolling on the ground, grappling over a blaster pistol that the latter had pulled from her pocket as they fought. The weapon discharged twice, shooting lances of red into the ceiling as they both battled for control over the weapon. The music in the cantina stopped as the fight had gone from being merely diversionary to potentially deadly.

It was ended, abruptly, when Am'ee grabbed the slaver by the side of the head and flung her off of Nikki, the blaster sliding across the floor among the throng of half-drunken onlookers that had decided to watch the fight despite the chance of getting hit by a stray blaster shot.

Nikki felt herself being hauled to her feet by the Dark Sun pilot.

"I think it's time that we get out of here." He said, pointing to the two Twi'lek bodyguards that were groggily pulling themselves back to their feet.

Nikki nodded and ran for the door, grabbing the hand of the presumed slave who still appeared to be in a state of complete shock. The short and squat Sullustan ran along with them, taking the time to shove one of the big Twi'lek men onto his back as he ran by the table of still enraged Bothans.

Nikki keyed a command into the remote in her pocket as they ran out the door into the fading late-day sunlight. Pilotless, her speeder quickly sailed across the road and automatically opened its canopy to allow her to climb in. They could hear yelling and screaming and even a few blaster shots coming from inside the cantina, it looked like now would be a very good time to be somewhere else.

"Com'on" She said, jumping into the pilot's seat. "Get in."

Even the slave girl needed very little prompting as she jumped into the rear seat alongside Am'ee. The Sullustan made a very misplaced leap and tumbled over the side of the XP-38, his face planting itself firmly in the landspeeder's floorboards. Nikki didn't bother waiting for him to situate himself; instead she punched the accelerator, speeding away from the front of the cantina with the protesting Sullustan's legs still kicking in an attempt to right himself.

A pair of blaster bolts buzzed frighteningly close to Nikki's ear as the slaver's bodyguards ran out the front of the cantina and began shooting at them. Am'ee kicked into action almost immediately and drew the pistol at his hip, spinning around in his seat to open fire behind them. A hit on the fuselage of her speeder left a black charred streak running down the side making Nikki hiss inwardly as she calculated how much it would cost to repair the damage.

Am'ee was standing in his seat, one arm curled around the speeder's center turbine engine as he fired quick bursts of shots at the front of the cantina and the two men standing there. The Sullustan had managed to almost get himself into a sitting position, once shoving Nikki with his knee. She swerved the speeder violently, almost into the side of an oncoming XP-37 whose pilot yelled what was almost certain to be a derogatory remark in his own native language.

The last sight Nikki had of the two Twi'leks before they passed around a corner and out of sight was the two of them running for their own speeder.

"Where are we headed?" Am'ee yelled, the wind from the open canopy whipping around him, blowing his hair into his face.

"Anywhere but here?" Nikki said, shrugging.

"Starport." Am'ee commanded. "I don't know who those guys are or how many of them there are, but I'd rather not wait around in the city to have a few dozen of them come looking for us."

Nikki saw the logic in that and changed directions to head for the Mos Eisley Starport. She closed the canopy of the speeder as Am'ee, confident that nobody was behind them, took his seat. His face was caked in blood from one of the punches the Twi'lek bodyguards administered to his nose, but the problem seemed to be low on his list of priorities at that moment in time.

"Okay, we take my ship and get the hell off of Tatooine." Am'ee said. "Then what?"

Nikki was silent for a moment, appraising exactly how much she could trust Am'ee, or anyone else in the vehicle for that matter. She hated the idea of too many people learning about her home nearby, but at this point she didn't see all that much of a way around it.

"I know where we will go, just get us off the ground." Nikki said after a moment; her trust, or at least her hope to trust, winning out.

- - - - - - - -

The Starport in Mos Eisley was perhaps the one place more dangerous than the cantina. A hive of activity at all times of the day and night; Enormous amounts of commerce took place with its confines, some legitimate and some nefarious. It was a place where time or day had little meaning.

Am'ee's YT-1210 freighter looked like it had seen better days. It was covered in fresh blaster marks which suggested that his most recent trip into Mos Eisley had been less than uneventful. Newish looking patch cables were bolted to the exterior of the hull, running from the hyperdrive to the power core; further evidence that half-assed repair jobs were a common hallmark of a smuggler's ship.

The four had moved through the port quickly, not wanting to run and thus attract attention, but not wanting to stick around long enough for the slavers to catch up to them either. The quickly clambered aboard the freighter and made their way to the cockpit, nobody really gave a sigh of relief until the loading ramp was sealed. Even then, they wouldn't be truly safe until they were off the ground and away from the planet completely.

"I can't believe that I'm leaving my speeder here." Nikki grumbled. "By the time I get back to Tatooine, some Jawa is going to be selling it for spare parts."

"Don't complain." Am'ee said, throwing a series of switches which started the main engines roaring to life. "You got out of there in one piece. I just hope that whatever you grabbed this slave for was worth it, and I'm going to want my cut of the action before this is all over and done with."

Nikki looked back at the girl, who sat in one of the cockpit's passenger seats. She seemed remarkably unaffected by everything that had happened so far. She simply stared with interest at the myriad of dubious wonders that made up the patchwork Corellian freighter.

"I didn't have any reason to do it; she just looked like she needed my help." Nichola admitted.

This caused Am'ee to turn around to look at her with wonder. "You risked my life just to free a slave for no reason other than to just set her free?"

Nikki turned and saw that the slave herself was looking at her with the same amount of wonder that Am'ee was, albeit without the look that she had just been cheated out of a paycheck.

"Well, if you want to look at it this way, I gave her a thousand credits last night." Nikki said. "Maybe I'm just protecting my investment."

Am'ee snorted, looking dour as he turned back to the controls and gently lifted the freighter off of the ground; the powerful thrusters whining as the ship shot skyward.

"Well doctor, I guess I should at least thank your friend here for saving my life back there." Am'ee said begrudgingly as he nodded to the Sullustan.

"My friend?" Nikki asked, suspiciously. "I thought that he was with you."

Both the doctor and the Black Sun pilot turned to look at the gray-faced Sullustan who simply smiled at them pleasantly.

"What?" he asked.

"Uh…" Nikki said. "Who are you?"

"Oh!" the man said happily. "I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself. My name is Chyp Khamdor."

Am'ee looked at Nikki who simply shrugged back at him.

"Ooookay. That didn't really answer my question. I mean…who are you? Who do you work for?" Nikki asked, perplexed.

"I work for myself!" Chyp said

"You're a smuggler?" Am'ee inquired.

"I'm a tailor" Chyp clarified, sounding almost insulted at the insinuation.

Am'ee put his hand to his forehead, as if it were suddenly in great pain for a moment before refocusing his concentration on the sky in front of him.

"You have never even seen any of us before and you just decided to get into a fight to help us?" Nikki asked, incredulous. "Why?"

The Sullustan shrugged, his pot belly jiggling. "You needed it."

Nikki regarded him for a moment and then started laughing. She sat back in her seat folding her arms across her middle as she shook her head, wiping a tear from her eye.

"I'm going to need to know where we are going sooner or later, Doctor." Am'ee warned.

"The Issor system. Set a course there." Nikki said, sighing. "We are heading for a planet named Trulalis."


	6. Chapter 5: Stormy night, Quiet planet

The place was among that last that Nikki could have foreseen taking anyone, much less a potential enemy such as Am'ee Morningstar. However, she didn't have any other nearby hiding places other than the safe-houses she had prepared on Tatooine itself. It would hurt her tremendously to have to abandon her home on Trulalis; she hoped that she could count on the people in the old freighter to keep it a secret, or at least not realize the sentimental value the old house had for her.

She had settled here a long time ago, longer even than she had her office in Mos Eisley. Part of her had needed to get away from civilization for a while, and what better place to do that than a planet that was almost completely devoid of sentient life. There were a few minor settlements here and there – one not all that far from her house. But for the most part, Trulalis was a world of quaint looking little villages that were devoid of life. The Empire had seen to that a decade or so before.

The YT-1210 gently came to a rest on the cliff side that Dr. Toora's house set upon. It normally looked to be an idyllic location, almost something out of a painting. The house itself was at the top of a hill that overlooked a seemingly endless ocean. On a sunny day it must have been an amazing sight, but with the sky dark and cloudy and bristling with thunder, it gave the old house an imposing and sinister feel to it.

The freighter's engines snuffed out one at a time as the power plant wound down to a stop. The trip there had been relatively short, the Issor system being only a couple hours in hyperspace away from Tatooine. The slave girl had not spoken at all during the trip, leaving Nikki to wonder exactly why it was that she had felt so compelled to free her from the slavers. It truly wasn't in her nature, she had never before really cared one way or another exactly what happened to a slave – but this one just somehow seemed different to her.

"Are you going to sit there daydreaming for long?" a voice said.

Nikki came out of her daze and realized that she had just been staring blankly through the window at the approaching thunderstorm. She looked up and saw that Am'ee was grinning at her.

"If you are, we could go inside and you could join us whenever you get finished." He added.

"Let you inside my house alone?" Nikki said, standing up and smoothing the camouflage duster. "That's certainly not going to happen in my lifetime."

- - - - - - - -

The loading ramp lifted back up and sealed the ship with a hiss of air and hydraulics, leaving its four passengers outside. The weather was even harsher now that they were out in it; rain cascaded down from the clouds almost sideways. In only a few moments, the four of them were soaked even though they were standing underneath the fuselage of the ship. The only daylight they could see was miles away into the horizon streaming down from the edges of the thunderstorm that they seemed to be in the center of. The light peeking out from the expanse of darkness gave the surrounding countryside of tall grasses being blown in the winds an eerie and alien appearance.

Every few seconds a lance of lightning would arc to the ground off in the distance, illuminating everything with a harsh and bright light. It reflected off of the gray stone walls of the four-level house itself and the wet ivy and moss that clung to them. The peal of thunder that preceded each stroke of lightning sounded deep and seemed to slowly and lazily roll its way over the planet's landscape. The sound felt as though it had a physical presence to it.

"Let's get out of this." Nikki said, walking out from under the cover of the ship. The wind whipping about her as she did, causing her long coat to billow up and her hair to slap around her face wildly as it quickly was matted down by the torrential rainfall.

She immediately took off running toward the front of the house, the cold rain almost blinding as it pounded into her face. The others ran along with her just as quickly, needed no invitation to hurry out of the inclement weather.

_Almost all of them_, she noted with wonder.

The Twi'lek walked along casually and slowly, as though she didn't have a care in the world. She was smiling as she strolled through the rain, holding her hands up as if she intended to catch and keep every individual rain drop as they tumbled from the clouds above. She laughed, closing her eyes at the feel of the water pouring down her face.

Nikki smiled as she turned and walked back in the direction of the young woman. She found her good cheer, even in the face of the events of the evening, to be maddeningly infectious.

"You've never been in the rain before, have you?" Nikki asked, shouting over the squall of the howling winds.

"No." The Twi'lek said almost as loudly. "I've heard about storms like this hitting the polar regions of Tatooine every ten years or so, but I never imagined that I would be standing in the middle of it. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen."

"My name is Nikki" Nichola said. "Nikki Toora, what's your name?"

The young woman looked at her, still smiling. "My name is Sowisp Blush; it's nice to meet you."

Nikki nodded. "You are going to see a whole lot more of these storms. They happen all the time on this planet, let's get you inside and get you something to eat."

The mention of food won out over the joys of the thunderstorm. Sowisp was all too eager to be led inside so that she could get changed into some clean clothes and get her stomach filled.

- - - - - - - -

"How's the girl?"

Nikki jumped, startled into wakefulness as she dozed on the third floor balcony outside of the formal dining room. She looked up and found Am'ee watching her thoughtfully as he leaned against the doorway. _The man moves like a damn ghost. _Nikki thought, not for the first time.

"She's okay." Nikki said, relaxing back into the wicker chair. "She's had a hard day and she needed some sleep. I got her fed and into some dry clothes and then gave her a sedative. She's sleeping in one of my guest rooms right now. You're welcome to stay for the night too if you want."

The rain was still coming down hard, although the wind had tapered off enough to allow her to go out to the covered balcony without getting too wet. The light courting the edges of the clouds was long gone, which was the only thing that Nikki had to go by that night had fallen.

She was shivering slightly, although it wasn't really that cold. The rain was actually somewhat warm; the season's monsoon storms blew up from the equatorial region and hammered the northern hemisphere with warm torrential rain for about two months out of the year. It was actually one of Nikki's favorite times of the year; she rather liked watching the rain. When she was in her darker moods, the thunder and the lightning were quite pleasing to her, in a way.

"I was talking to Chyp downstairs for a couple hours." Am'ee said. "I don't know what he was thinking, doing what he did, but I am pretty damned grateful that he did it."

Nikki nodded. "I think we just had luck on our side all the way around. Thank you for backing me up back there, I really appreciate it."

Am'ee said nothing. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a polished steel flask. He opened the cap up and took a drink, swishing it around in his mouth before swallowing.

"What's that?" Nikki asked, looking at the flask.

"Membrosia" Am'ee said, handing the open flask to Nikki. "It was made on Alderaan, so it's getting to be pretty hard to find these days."

"I imagine it would be." Nikki said, recalling the planet's destruction by the Empire half a year earlier.

She took a sip and it seemed sweet and strangely refreshing for a moment until the alcohol hit. The trickle going down her throat burned so bad that she could feel her face turning red from the heat. Despite her best efforts she started coughing loudly and handed the flask back to Am'ee.

The man laughed quietly, taking the bottle back and swallowing another mouthful.

"I've been drinking this stuff since I was barely old enough to fly; the fact that it's getting harder and harder to find the stuff is like slowly losing the last of my childhood friends." Am'ee said, looking at the flask fondly.

Looking at the tall pilot's face, realization suddenly dawned on Nikki. She suddenly felt terribly sorry for this competitor, this Black Sun pilot that she had barely even known before tonight.

"Am'ee." Nikki said. "You're from Alderaan, aren't you?"

Am'ee smiled and nodded. "Originally, though I hadn't been back for years. It seemed that every time I had the chance to go back home for a while, there was always something that came up. There was always something just a little bit more important than going home for a few weeks.

"Looking back, I really regret it. I would have liked to see Alderaan one more time. I would have liked to see my family one more time even though I was never really close to any of them."

"I'm sorry." Nikki said, sympathetically.

"No need to be." Am'ee said, standing up straight and offering a thin and hollow smile. "What's done is done and there isn't a damn thing that I can do, or anyone else can do about it. We just move on.

"You though, doctor. You intrigue the hell out of me. I risked my life thinking that there was going to be some kind of payoff for it. But you had no reason at all for freeing the girl, unless you lied to me about it."

"I didn't lie." Nikki said, a little defensively.

"Then why did you do it?" Am'ee asked. "I've never seen a Shade do anything that could be mistaken for compassionate without a healthy paycheck waiting for them at the end of the day. You guys are the next best thing to the Hutts."

"This coming from a pirate?" Nikki asked, sardonically. "You are a Black Sun, and you've already admitted that the only reason that you helped me was because you intended to cut in on whatever profit I was getting. Don't act as though you and your organization are any more noble than ours is."

Am'ee held up his hands, smiling. "Relax. All I wanted to know was why you did it. I'm not accusing you of anything."

Nikki nodded, sighing. "Haven't you ever reached the point that you say; 'I just can't take this any more, I've had enough'? Haven't you every just gotten sick and tired of seeing bad things happen to people and gotten down about how you are not only letting it happen, but you are often part of it?"

"No." Am'ee said bluntly. "To me it is just a job. I do what I have to do to keep my ship in working condition and keep my stomach full. I don't care about the morality of what I do. I will deal with that in the next life."

"That's what I would have told you up until about five second before I grabbed the girl's arm." Nikki said, motioning for the flask in the pirate's hand. "I just have seen and done a lot of bad things in my life and I saw something that I could do to pay off a little bit of my debt. I don't pretend to know why I did it, but I wouldn't go back and change it if I could. I'm happy that I did it."

She took another swig out of the bottle, grimacing slightly as it rolled down her throat. She handed the flask back to Am'ee, wiping a burgundy drop of the thick liquor away from the corner of her mouth.

Am'ee capped the bottle and put it back inside his jacket.

"I'm going to go start prepping my ship for the trip back to Tatooine." Am'ee told her. "I know it's weighing heavily on your mind, so I'm just going to come out and say it – Your secret is safe with me. I'm not going to tell anyone else about this place or use it to make myself a profit. As far as I'm concerned, I've never been here."

Nikki smiled at the man. "Thank you Am'ee."

The pirate nodded and opened the balcony door. He started to walk through but stopped at the last moment.

"Oh, and doctor," he said. "You might want to figure out how you are going to remove yourself from Shade as quickly as possible."

Nikki looked at the man, confused. "Why?"

"You might find that your newfound morality is very incompatible with life in a crime syndicate." He finished, looking at her pointedly for a moment before walking out the door.


	7. Chapter 6: A Pair of Pasts

Nikki awoke, slowly and groggily to a dagger of sunlight streaming through the window of her bedroom. She looked at her surroundings in mild confusion, the events of the past day taking a moment to catch up with her. She also realized that this was the first day in a while, too long, that she could recall not waking up with a hangover.

She stretched out, groaning at the accumulated aches and pains that had taken up residence in her body. She was still wearing her clothes from the previous day; by the time she had gone to bed she was too tired to bother taking them off. Twenty years ago she would have been able to shrug off the last few days and already be up and on her way. But she wasn't in her teens anymore, she was nearing forty years old and it seemed that every day took more and more of a toll on her body.

She stood up and walked to the window. Like a nightmare, the huge storm of the previous night was gone without much of a trace that it had ever happened – apart from a little moisture on the tall grasses of the fields that stretched out away from Nikki's cliff side house.

She grabbed the handles of the double doors and opened them. The morning breeze that blew in was pleasantly warm and fragrant. She walked out onto the balcony, hearing the crashing of the surf a couple hundred feet below on the beach. Although she did like the brutal thunderstorms that the planet did sometimes dish out, this was the reason that she came to live here in the first place. All in all she was quite certain that Trulalis was one of the most beautiful planets that she had ever seen; and she had seen a great many.

She walked around the corner of the balcony for a moment so she could see the opposite end of the house and found that her suspicion was confirmed. The freighter was gone; Am'ee had decided to depart back for Tatooine at some point while she had been asleep. Part of her felt relieved that he was away from her home, but another part of her enjoyed his company and was rather sad to see him gone. She just hoped that he meant those things that he said about not telling anyone where she lived.

Leaving the double doors open, Nikki walked back into the house and pulled the heavy duster off and began changing into some clothes that were more befitting her surroundings. She opened her closet and selected a soft yellow shirt and some well-worn denim pants. It was a relief to be back home where she could actually wear clothing that she liked rather than clothes that served no purpose other than to protect her from the harsh elements of Tatooine's desert climate and fierce predators (both sentient and non-sentient alike).

She had just finished getting dressed when she smelled something.

Curious, Nikki walked to her bedroom door and pressed the touchpad beside it, the door slid open with a muted hiss of air. The aroma was stronger in the hallway, and definitely coming from the kitchen two floors below. It reminded her strangely of the smell that came from a home that was behind her office, although she couldn't recognize exactly what it was, it was strangely appetizing. That house was home to a Twi'lek family, making Nichola wonder if her new houseguest was perhaps cooking breakfast.

Nikki quickly made her way down the long circular stairway and walked into the kitchen on the first floor. Sowisp was standing in the kitchen with her back to Nikki. The young woman had apparently turned off the cooking droid and decided to prepare a meal herself. The sizzling sound and smell of cooking meat was tantalizing, she didn't know all that much about the girl but it was quite apparent that she knew how to cook.

"Good morning Sowisp" Nikki finally said.

The Twi'lek turned around and smiled. "Oh, good morning mistress. I hope that you don't mind. I didn't know where to find a lot of things, so I've had to kind of rummage around through your conservator and pantry. I just wanted to have breakfast ready for you when you woke up, I apologize that I'm running late."

Nikki shook her head, suddenly troubled.

"First…" She said. "I'm not your mistress, and I don't want you to treat me like one. And I don't expect you to cook meals for me. I don't mind you cooking, my droid is about the worst cook I've ever seen…and that's really saying something. But if you are going to make a meal, I expect you to do it for both of us, not just for me."

"Now…" Nikki said, walking up to the counter. "What can I do to help out?"

Sowisp looked at her cautiously, as though attempting to sense if some kind of trick was being played on her. Finally she pointed over to the conservator.

"I… I saw some fruit juice in there. Could you get… us… some glasses and pour it?" Sowisp said, looking almost on the verge of panic at the idea of asking, of telling, someone else to do something.

"Of course I will." Nikki said, walking and opening the door to the cold-storage conservator.

She found exactly what Sowisp was talking about, a carafe of juice from a local fruit known as the "Biloba" that produced a sweet and somewhat tart yellow juice that seemed to go very well with breakfast. Nikki grabbed a couple glasses and filled them with the liquid.

She looked over her should and saw that Sowisp was regarding her with a curious look, though she quickly turned back to her work when she realized she had been caught staring.

_This is going to be very interesting. _Nikki thought.

- - - - - - - -

Nikki pushed her plate out from in front of her, laughing. She found that she truly enjoyed the company of the Twi'lek. Although generally soft spoken, she had a sense of humor that Nikki enjoyed. It seemed that despite her original misgivings, she was going to genuinely enjoy having the former slave's company around the house.

"Tell me Sowisp." Nikki said, forcing the conversation on the serious side. "How did you end up in the Mos Eisley Cantina?"

Sowisp seemed to think about it for a moment and then nodded, as though making the decision that Nikki was safe enough to trust with the story.

"I was on a ship. Not a starship, just a short range planetary transport." Sowisp explained. "It had some kind of problem and we crashed while we were headed from Mos Entha to Mos Eisley. Everyone else on the transport was dead when I regained consciousness, so I stayed around for a while waiting for someone to come rescue me. Nobody ever did, so I just made the assumption that I was now free and decided to go into town and wait until my master came to find me."

"But wasn't that woman who tried to take you away from the cantina your former master?" Nikki asked.

Sowisp nodded. "Yeah, her name is Adorna Fayme. She bought me not too long ago and was transporting me here for auction when that transport crashed. I guess that she's just trying to salvage at least a little of her losses."

"But you said you were waiting for her at the Cantina?" Nikki asked.

Sowisp smiled devilishly. "I guess some time between getting there and when she found me, I decided that I was tired of being a slave."

"As though you could actually want to be a slave?" Nikki said, incredulously.

"Nikki, you have to understand. Slavery is so ingrained into Twi'lek culture that we don't always see it as a bad thing; sometimes we see it as a good thing. Ryloth is our home world, but it's a brutal planet; even more brutal than Tatooine. Slavery is seen as a perfectly acceptable means of escaping the poverty of the home world. It gives us a chance to get an education and live some kind of meaningful life.

"My parents had at least three children that I'm aware of. I don't remember all that much of my early childhood, but I do remember that my father died. We were always on the verge of starvation even before that, and with him gone there was no way that my mother could support all of us. I was the youngest, so she sold me as a slave so that she and the others could survive."

"That's terrible." Nikki said, aghast.

"Don't be so quick to judge" Sowisp said. "She knew that I would probably be better off as a slave than her and my sisters would have been remaining on Ryloth. And besides, nobody would ever do that to their children lightly. I can only imagine the kind of torture it must have put her through – and must be still putting her through, if she's still alive."

"Well, I hope that you will find this place to your liking." Nikki said. "You have the run of the house, you are not my slave and I'm not your mistress – you may come and go as you please."

"What planet is this anyway?" Sowisp interjected.

"This is Trulalis, it's just outside the Arkanis sector, and it's probably one of the most beautiful and quietest planets in the galaxy." Nikki said. "Only a few thousand people live planetside, so I don't have to worry too much about visitors."

"Only a few thousand?" Sowisp asked, astounded. "I would figure a planet this amazing would have billions on it."

"There were about five-hundred million people living here up until ten years or so back." Nikki said, looking thoughtful. "There was some stupid dispute over who knows what and the Empire came in and murdered everyone on the planet. There was a healthy smuggler trade here for a few years as the grave-robbers plundered the planet, but once that was over and done with it became mostly uninhabited; most people don't like the idea of living in a graveyard."

Sowisp nodded, shivering despite the early morning warmth. The two sat in silence for a moment after that, finishing their juice and reflecting on their own inner thoughts.

"What about you Nikki?" she finally asked. "Why is it you are so willing to live here when nobody else will?"

Nichola shrugged. "I grew up in the core worlds and finally I had just had enough of the wars and the politics. About five years ago I left for the outer rim and started up a medical clinic here. I guess I came here for soul searching and never really found what it was I was looking for. But even so, it's still better living here than back in the core."

"Where were you from?" Sowisp asked. "Originally, I mean."

"Chandrila." Nikki said. "But I didn't really grow up there; I spent most of my childhood on Coruscant."

Sowisp almost lit up at this. "Wow, you grew up on the Imperial seat? That must have been amazing."

Nikki shrugged, her eyes betraying that she had none of the sense of awe or wonder that Sowisp had concerning the capital of the Galactic Empire.

"It's just any other planet really." Nikki said, her mood suddenly taking a dark turn. "I've seen places that are a lot worse, but not many. I would rather be out here on the edge of civilization or Tatooine, or your Ryloth, than Coruscant."

"What about your parents?" Sowisp inquired cheerfully. "What is it that they do?"

Sowisp was silenced immediately. The glare that Nikki shot her made it clear that she was getting dangerously close to forbidden territory.

"I'm sorry." Sowisp said softly.

Nikki shook her head and offered a weak smile. "Nah, I'm sorry. My past is just something that I don't like thinking about, much less talking about."

Any awkwardness the conversation might have brought up was immediately forgotten as the door to the small common dining room was opened and Chyp walked into the room, yawning.

"I really didn't plan on sleeping so long." The Sullustan said apologetically. "I was wondering if that food that is left in the kitchen is called for?"

Sowisp giggled softly and Nikki shook her head.

"Go right ahead Chyp." Nikki said. "Help yourself."

"Fantastic!" The pot-bellied tailor said, hurrying out of the room – his lethargy vanishing at the offer of food.

The two women grinned at each other as the door swung shut.

"What do you make of him?" Sowisp asked, nodding to the door.

"I…" Nikki put a hand to her forehead and shook her head. "I don't have a clue what to think of him. Until he walked in here I had thought that Am'ee must have taken him back to Tatooine. Now I guess I'm going to have to arrange transport back to Mos Eisley a little bit faster than I had planned."

"When did you plan to go back?" Sowisp asked.

"I don't know." Nikki admitted. "I was figuring on staying out here a week or so. It's not that it is all that long of a trip to get out here, but once I get here I'm not all that big on getting back right away. And besides, I'm really not looking forward to figuring out how much trouble pulling you out of that cantina is going to cause me. I'm hoping that this Fayme woman only had those two heavies and that I won't have to deal with five or six dozen more of them when I head back to do business there."

Sowisp bowed her head, looking ashamed. Nikki immediately regretted the way she phrased her word and put her hand on top of one of Sowisp's.

"Don't worry about it." Nikki said, smiling reassuredly. "None of that was your fault and I'm going to look into it and make sure that woman doesn't bother you again."

"Please don't hurt her." Sowisp asked softly.

"What the hell for?" Nikki asked, a little more harshly than she had intended. "She was trying to make you a slave again."

"I know." Sowisp admitted. "But she was never cruel to me when she owned me, in fact she was a lot nicer than a lot of the masters I've had in the past. I'd rather not see her get hurt unless there's no other choice."

Nikki stared at Sowisp for a moment and then finally nodded.

"Okay." She agreed. "Not unless there is no other choice."

The door burst open and Chyp entered the room carrying two plates loaded with food, one in each hand. He balanced them carefully as he set each of them down on the table and sat, looking between the two women.

"I'm sorry." He said. "I'm not intruding by eating in here am I?"

"No, of course not." Nikki said. "I'm actually glad you are here. I think I'm going to have some business for you; you did say that you are a tailor right?"

Chyp nodded, devouring food off of his plate with frightening efficiency.

"And a dressmaker." He said, around a mouthful. "I service clients from all over the outer rim, how my I help you?"

Nikki smiled at Sowisp and then looked back to the Sullustan.

"I need you to outfit her…completely." Nikki said. "And money is no object."


End file.
